Brunswick Gardens (22 page)

He knocked on the study door, and when Ramsay answered, he went in.

“Ah, Dominic,” Ramsay said with a forced courage. He looked ill, as if he had slept little and his weariness was deeper than the merely physical. There was a hollowness around his eyes, but also within them. “I am glad you came.” He moved his hands briskly among the papers on his desk, as though whatever he was looking for was of great importance. “There are one or two people I would like you to see.” He looked up with a brief smile. “Old friends, in a sense, parishioners who need a word of comfort or guidance. I should be very obliged if you could find the time today. There it is.” He produced a piece of
paper on which were written four names and addresses. He passed it across the desk. “None of them is far. You could walk if the weather is pleasant.” He glanced at the window. “I think it is.”

Dominic took the list, read it, then put it in his pocket.

“Of course I will.” He wanted to add something, but now that he was alone with Ramsay he did not know what. There was a generation between them. Ramsay was in every way his senior. He had rescued Dominic when he was in despair, so filled with self-loathing he even contemplated taking his own life. It was Ramsay who had patiently taught him a different and better way, who had introduced a true faith, not the bland, complacent, Sunday-only sort he was used to. How could he now tax Ramsay over this tragedy and press him to speak when he obviously did not wish to?

Or did he? He was sitting awkwardly in his large chair, his hands fiddling with papers, his eyes first on Dominic’s, then downcast, then up again.

“Do you wish to speak about it?” Dominic asked, wondering if he were trespassing unforgivably, but to sit in silence was such a cowardly thing to do.

Ramsay did not pretend to misunderstand.

“What is there to say?” He shrugged his shoulders. He looked bemused, and Dominic realized that behind the effort to be busy, to appear normal, he was also very frightened. “I don’t know what happened.” His face tightened. “We quarreled. She left the room in a temper, shouting back at me. I am ashamed to say I shouted at her equally abusively. Then I returned to my desk. I am not aware of hearing anything more. I disregard many of the household sounds, the occasional bang or squeal.” For a moment his concentration on the present was broken. “I recall one of them spilling a bucket of water on the carpet in the library. She had been cleaning the windows. She screamed as if she were being attacked by robbers.” He looked bemused.
“Such rage. Everyone came running. And then there are always the mice.”

“Mice?” Dominic was lost. “Mice are tiny. They squeak.”

A flicker of amusement lit Ramsay’s eyes for a moment, then died. “Maids scream, Dominic, if they see mice. I thought Nellie would crack the chandeliers.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Dominic felt ridiculous. “I didn’t think …”

Ramsay sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Why should you? You were trying to be helpful. I realize that and appreciate it. You were giving me the opportunity to tell you if I had some appalling burden on my conscience—if, in fact, I did push Unity down the stairs, either intentionally or accidentally. It can’t have been easy for you to approach me on the subject, and I am aware of the courage it must have taken.” He looked straight back at Dominic. “Perhaps it is a relief to speak about it …”

Dominic felt panic rise up inside him. He was not equal to this. What if Ramsay confessed? Was Dominic bound by any oath of confidence, or even an unspoken understanding? What should he do? Persuade Ramsay to confess to Pitt? Why? Help him towards a repentance before God? Did Ramsay even understand what he had done? Surely that was the most important thing? Dominic looked at him and saw no harrowing guilt. Fear, certainly, and some guilt, some awareness of the enormity of the situation. But not the guilt of murder.

“Yes …” Dominic swallowed and nearly choked. He clasped his hands together in his lap, below the height of the desk, where Ramsay could not see them.

Ramsay smiled more widely. “Your face is transparent, Dominic. I am not going to lay a burden of guilt upon you. The worst I can confess to is that I am not sorry she is dead … not nearly as sorry as I know I should be. She was another human being, young and full of energy and intelligence. I mustn’t suppose
that, in spite of her behavior to the contrary at times, she was not just as capable of tenderness and hope, love and pain as the rest of us.”

He bit his lip, his eyes full of confusion.

“My brain tells me that it is tragic that her life should have been cut off. My emotions tell me I am greatly relieved not to have to hear her arrogant certainty in the superiority of mankind over all else, most especially of Mr. Darwin. Passionately … intensely …” His fingers locked around his pen so violently he bent the quill. “I do not wish to be a random organism descended from apes!” His voice thickened, close to tears. “I wish to be the creation of God, a God who has created everything around me and cares for it, who will redeem me for my weaknesses, forgive my errors and my sins, and who will somehow sort out the tangles of our human lives and make a kind of sense of them in the end.” He dropped to a whisper. “And I can no longer believe it, except for moments when I am alone, at night, and the past seems to come back to me, and I can forget all the books and the arguments and feel as I once used to.”

Rain pattered against the window, and the moment after sunlight picked out the bright drops.

“She is not the cause of doubt in the world,” Ramsay went on. “Of course she is not. I had heard the arguments before she ever came to Brunswick Gardens. We all had. We had discussed them. I have reassured many a confused and unhappy parishioner, as no doubt you have, and will continue to.” He swallowed, pulling his mouth into a line of pain. “But she focused it all. She was so monumentally certain!” He was looking beyond Dominic now, towards the bookcase with the glass fronts shining in the sudden sun. “It is no one thing she said, rather the day-by-day air of being so terribly sure of herself. She never let slip a chance to mock. Her logic was relentless.”

He stopped for a moment. Dominic tried to think of something to say, then realized he should not interrupt now.

“She could demolish mine in any argument we had. Her memory was perfect,” Ramsay said with a shrug. “There were times when she made me feel ridiculous. I admit, Dominic, I hated her then. But I did not push her, that I swear.” He looked at Dominic steadily, pleading to be believed, and yet not willing to embarrass him by asking openly. And perhaps he was afraid to hear the answer.

Dominic was embarrassed. He wanted to believe him, yet how could it be true? Four people had heard Unity cry out “No, no, Reverend!” Had it not been a protest but a cry for help? Then it could only be Mallory who had pushed her.

Why? She had not touched his faith. His beliefs fed on opposition. To him it was only another confirmation that he was right. Every time she mocked him or checked his blind statements with logic, he simply restated them. If she did not understand, it was due to her lack of humility. If his reasoning was faulty, even completely circular, that was the mystery of God, and not supposed to be understood by man. If she made a scientific statement he disliked, he simply contradicted it. He might be angry, but he was never inwardly disturbed.

“Dominic, I did not kill her!” Ramsay repeated, and this time the fear and the loneliness were sharp in his voice, intruding into Dominic’s emotions.

This was a debt he must repay. But how, without endangering himself? And surely Ramsay, who had made him what he was, would not want to undo his creation by having him deny his honesty now.

“Then it was Mallory,” Dominic said, forcing himself to look at Ramsay’s eyes. “Because I did not.”

Ramsay covered his face with his hands and leaned forward over the desk.

Dominic sat motionless. He had no idea what to do. Ramsay’s distress seemed to fill the room. He could not possibly be unaware of it. To pretend would be inconceivable. Ramsay had never pretended with him, never evaded an issue or offered in-sincere
words. Now, at this moment in this silent room, it was time to repay the obligation he had incurred. It was time to put into effect all the good ideas, the beliefs he had worked for so hard. What was the theory worth if, when he was faced with reality, he was unable or unwilling to meet it? It became a sham, just as hollow and useless as Unity Bellwood had claimed.

He could not allow that to be true!

He thought of reaching across the desk and touching Ramsay’s hand, of gripping it, then instantly abandoned the idea. They knew each other so well in some ways. Ramsay had seen the very depth of his own confusion and despair. He had not shrunk then even from holding him.

But that was different. Even as it had placed a bond between them, it had also set them apart, made Ramsay forever the guide, the invulnerable, the rescuer. To try to reverse that now would be to strip from him the last dignity. Dominic would not intrude.

He kept his hands where they were.

“If it was Mallory, we must face it,” he said aloud. “We must help him in any and every way possible. We must help him to acknowledge what has happened and, if we can, to understand it. Either he did it by accident or else it was intentional.”

His voice sounded cold, terribly rational. It was not what he intended.

“If it was meant, then he must have had a powerful reason. Perhaps she taunted him once too often, and he finally lost his temper. I expect he regrets it bitterly now. Every man has lost his temper at some time in his life. It is easy to understand, certainly with Unity.”

Ramsay lifted his head slowly and stared at Dominic. The older man looked ashen, his eyes haunted.

Dominic could barely control his voice. He heard himself speaking as if he were someone else, far away. He still sounded extraordinarily calm.

“Then we shall help him with the police and the law. He must know that we shall not abandon him, nor condemn him. I am sure he understands the difference between condemning the sin and the person who commits it. We shall have to show him the reality of that.”

Ramsay breathed in and out very slowly. “He says he did not do it.”

Dominic sat quite still. Did Ramsay think that he had? Is that what he was saying? It would be natural. For all their differences, however deep, Mallory was Ramsay’s son.

“Do you think Clarice did?” He was struggling to use reason. He must be sensible.

“No, of course not!” Ramsay’s face showed how absurd he considered the idea.

“I didn’t,” Dominic said steadily. “I did not especially like her, but I had no cause to kill her.”

“Didn’t you?” Ramsay asked with a lift of curiosity in his voice. “I am not blind, Dominic, even if I appear to be absorbed in my books and papers. I saw how she was attracted to you, how she looked at you. She teased Mallory, provoked him, but he was too vulnerable to be a real challenge to her. But you were. You are older, wiser; you have known women before, a great many of them, so you told me when we first met. A
nd
I should have guessed it even if you had not told me. It is there in the assurance of your bearing with them. You understand women too well to be a novice. You rejected Unity, didn’t you?”

Dominic felt a flush of extreme discomfort. “Yes …”

“Then you were the perfect challenge for her,” Ramsay concluded. “She loved a battle. Victory was her ultimate delight. Intellectual victory was very sweet, and God knows she sought enough of those over me, and found too many …” His face tightened with momentary anger and humiliation, then smoothed out again. “But the power of emotional victory was more complete. Are you sure she did not provoke you too far, and it was
you who momentarily lost your temper with her? I could understand your pushing her away from you, literally, physically, and causing the accident which killed her.”

“So could I,” Dominic agreed, feeling the fear rise inside him. So could Pitt. In fact, Pitt would enjoy believing it. It would let Ramsay escape, and Vita. It would be exactly what Clarice prayed for, escape for both her father and her brother. And, of course, Mallory would welcome it. Tryphena would not care as long as someone was blamed.

Dominic swallowed and found his throat tight. He had not pushed Unity. He had been nowhere near the landing when she fell, and he had no idea who had been. This was even worse than Cater Street. Then it had all been new. He had not known what to expect. He had been numb with the shock of Sarah’s death. Now he was very much alive, every nerve aware of the dreadful possibilities. He had seen the pattern before.

“But I did not push her,” he said again. “You are right, I am experienced.” He swallowed. His mouth was dry. “I know how to refuse a woman without panicking, without provoking a quarrel, let alone violence.” That was not strictly true, but this was not a time for going into qualifying explanations.

Ramsay said nothing.

Dominic cast around for what to say next. Ramsay all but stood accused of the crime. If he were innocent he must feel just the same sense of terror that had brushed by Dominic, only worse. Everyone had implicated Ramsay, even his own family. The police seemed to believe them. He must feel so alone it was beyond the imagination to conceive.

Instinctively, Dominic stretched out his hand and put it over Ramsay’s wrist, then when he realized what he had done, it was too late to pull away.

“Pitt will get to the truth,” he said firmly. “He will not allow an innocent man to be accused or to suffer arrest. That is why they sent him. He will not bow to pressure from anyone, and he never gives up.”

Ramsay looked mildly surprised. “How do you know?”

“He is married to my wife’s sister. I knew him a long time ago.”

“Your wife?”

“She is dead. She was murdered … ten years ago.”

“Oh … yes, of course. I’m sorry. For a moment I forgot,” Ramsay apologized. Gently he loosed his hand from Dominic’s, ran it over his head as if to brush back the hair which was too thin to need it. “I am afraid I am finding it very difficult to concentrate at the moment. This is like walking through a dark dream. I keep tripping over things.”